Among those issues postponed until permanent status negotiations in
the September 1993 Declaration of Principles, signed by Israel and
the PLO, was the problem of the refugees. Indeed, a distinction was
implied between refugees and "displaced Palestinians/If the latter
defined as those "registered on 4 June 1967" presumably
Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza who were "displaced"
as a result of the Six-Day War. Agreement to defer consideration of
the refugee problem until the last phase of the peace process is
indicative of the difficulties that lie ahead in attempts to cope
with the issue, which is likely to prove as controversial as the
future of Jerusalem, Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories, or the delineation of borders between Israel and the
Palestinian entity or state.
The definition of "refugee" may until now have been merely
theoretical, but defining just who is a refugee can become
critical. Because there is no agreement on "who is a refugee,"
there is no agreement on how many Palestinian refugees there are.
According to the definition of UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and
Works Agency), there were over three million Palestinian refugees
by the beginning of 1995, a small percent of the total number of
refugees in the world. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) there were 23 million refugees who had fled across
international borders and another 26 million "displaced" within
their own countries, or one in every 115 of the world's population
in some kind of exile early this year. Refugees counted by the
UNHCR include 7.5 million in Africa, 5.7 million in Asia, and six
million in Europe; these numbers do not include those displaced
within their own countries by eth¬nic partition, such as
Bosnia. There were another 2.3 million refugees and an uncounted
number of displaced persons in the former Soviet republics. These
figures do not include the Palestinian refugees who are in a
separate category, under jurisdiction of UNRWA, not the
UNHCR.
The largest programs monitored by the UNHCR include numbers of
refugees equal to those covered by the UNRWA program: Former
Yugoslavia - 3.7 million, Afghanistan - three million, Rwanda and
Burundi - two mil¬lion, Liberia - 870,000, and Somalia -
550,000. UNRWA's 1995 operational budget of over U.S.$323 million
is far larger than the largest UNHCR pro¬gram - $244.7 million
for the 3.7 million refugees in the Balkans.
Refugee Qualifications
Why are the Palestinian refugees in a special category? The reason
is related to problems of defining refugees that arose after World
War II. International law is ambiguous in defining the term, under
which, gener¬ally, a refugee is a person who does not have the
protection of his country of origin. However, there has never been
consensus on a single interna¬tional definition; some
governments applied diverse definitions according to the purpose
for which the term refugee was used. The 1951 U.N. Refugee
Convention was quite precise in defining a refugee as anyone
uprooted as a result of violence and the denial of human rights.
The emphasis in the Convention was on persecution, i.e., a
deliberate act of government against individuals, thus excluding
victims of general insecu¬rity, oppression, economic
dislocation, or people who did not cross a national boundary to
seek refuge. Large numbers of migrants who have not been subjected
to individual persecution have not been accepted as refugees
although many have received ad hoc humanitarian assistance as de
facto or non-Convention refugees. However, as the number of "non
¬Convention refugees" fleeing violent upheavals like those in
the Balkans, Africa, and the former Soviet Union multiplies, the
international commu¬nity finds increasing difficulty in coping
with "refugee" problems.
Differences in defining the term "refugee" have resulted in diverse
poli¬cies in dealing with the problem. At times, the UNHCR has
been at odds with various governments as a result of these
differences. The UNHCR's more generous acceptance of refugee
qualifications has in some instances widened the interpretation of
who is eligible for assistance. Examples of broadened
interpretation of the term include the Organization of African
States which in its 1969 Convention of Refugee Problems in Africa
includ¬ed anyone "who, owing to external aggression,
occupation, foreign domi¬nation or events seriously disturbing
public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin
or nationality, is compelled to leave his place of national habitat
in order to seek refuge in another place outside his country of
origin or nationality." The 1951 Cartagena Declaration covering
Central American refugees included "persons who have fled their
country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened
by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts,
massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have
seriously disturbed public order." The Convention of Europe
Defining Refugee Status applies to those "unable or unwilling for
... varied reasons to return to their countries of origin." In the
United States and Great Britain, those seeking refuge are required
to establish not only their own motivations for flight, but prove
to the authorities that there is "reasonable" evidence of
persecution should they return to their home countries.
The Palestinian refugee problem has been on the international
agenda far longer than most others, and the establishment of UNRWA,
the agency charged with dealing with this problem, preceded
formation of the UNHCR and most other post-World War II agencies
organized to deal with refugee problems. Consequently, the
definition of "Palestine refugee" also preceded the various other
refugee definitions.
Palestinians registered with UNRWA were deliberately excluded from
the competence of the UNHCR and in the 1951 Refugee Convention, on
the insistence of the Arab states which regarded the Palestinian
problem and its ramifications as sui generis. The Arab
states and the Palestinians them¬selves considered their
situation distinctive. In most post-war situations, refugees have
sought asylum in host countries rather than return to their
orig¬inal homes; whereas the Palestinians, almost unanimously,
insisted on the "right of return" to their former homes in Israel.
Rather than resettlement, the Palestinians and the Arab states
supporting them, demanded repatriation.
The United States, the largest contributor to UNRWA and the country
most influential in determining its policies, agreed to support
continuation of a separate agency for the Palestinian refugees,
largely for political rea¬sons. The American government
perceived the refugee problem as a major threat to Middle East
stability, and "loss" of the Middle East because of its oil,
critical to European recovery during the 1950s, would have been
considered a major disaster. Therefore UNRWA's definition of
Palestine refugee became generally accepted, although it was not
all-inclusive.
UNRWA's definition was to a large extent ad hoc, i.e., it developed
as a result of field experience. Lacking an accepted definition of
eligibility for refugee assistance, it became increasingly evident
that the international community would have to be responsible for
the care of hundreds of thousands of displaced victims of the 1948
war. Thus, it was necessary, for administrative reasons, to define
the problem including eligibility for assistance. The U.N. General
Assembly had never defined the term refugee in its resolutions,
leav¬ing it up to UNRWA officials to develop their own
criteria.
Initially UNRWA defined a refugee "as a needy person who, as a
result of the war in Palestine, has lost his home and his means of
livelihood." This definition included some 17,000 Jews who had
lived in areas of Palestine taken over by Arab forces during the
1948 war and about 50,000 Arabs liv¬ing within Israel's
armistice frontiers. Israel took responsibility for these
individuals, and by 1950 they were removed from the UNRWA rolls
leaving only Palestine Arabs and a few hundred non-Arab Christian
Palestinians outside Israel in UNRWA's refugee category.
During the first year of operations, UNRWA classified 940,000
people as refugees. But under U.N. and u.s. pressure, it was forced
to pare down its rolls and enforce a more strict definition of
refugee. Rectification of UNRWA rolls resulted in the elimination
of tens of thousands from assistance.
Refugees and Descendants
Over the years UNRWA continued to refine its classification until
the present working definition was reached. It states that: "A
Palestine refugee is a person whose normal residence was Palestine
for a minimum of two years preceding the conflict in 1948, and who,
as a result of the conflict, lost both his home and his means of
livelihood and took refuge in one of the countries where UNRWA
provides relief [Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank, Gaza]. Refugees
within this definition and the direct descendants of such refugees
are eligible for Agency assistance if they are: registered with
UNRWA; living in the area of UNRWA operations; and in need" (UNRWA,
UNRWA 1950-1990: Serving Palestine Refugees. Vienna: April 1990).
This definition applies to those who left their homes in Palestine
and their descendants (author's emphasis). By 1995, the vast
majority of those receiving assistance from UNRWA were descendants,
registered in the five host areas. Although the number of refugees
in this category had increased from 914,000 in 1950 to over three
million by 1995, there were several groups of Palestinians
displaced by the Arab-Israeli conflict who did not fit UNRWA's
definition. They included several hundred thousand Palestinians in
"frontier villages" on the Jordan side of the armistice lines who
lost their livelihood when they were cut off from fields on the
Israel side of the border; several thousand Gazans in a similar
situation; several thousand Beduins cut off from traditional
grazing areas, and several thou¬sand needy Palestinians in
areas beyond UNRWA operations. In the early 1950s, there were more
than 300,000 people in these categories who did not fit UNRWA's
refugee definition; they were called" other claimants" whom UNRWA
was unable to assist because of lack of funds.
The June 1967 war created a new category - about 100,000 who were
refugees a second time, having left their original homes in 1948,
and their "temporary" residences in Jordan's West Bank during the
1967 war. Another 100,000 indigenous inhabitants of the West Bank
who fled to Jordan did not fit UNRWA's refugee definition; they
were called "displaced persons" rather than refugees (see above).
This "special category" has been the subject of discussion between
Israel and Jordan and the PLO, although negotiations over 1948
refugees have been deferred until final status talks.
When the refugee issue is taken up in final status negotiations,
one of the first questions likely to create differences of opinion
between Israel and the Palestinians will be how to define refugees,
the parameters of the prob¬lem, whether or not a token number
of those defined as Palestine refugees can return to Israel, how
many can be absorbed economically and politi¬cally in the
Palestinian state, who will be eligible for compensation, and
whether or not Jews who left Arab countries after 1947 are refugees
with claims to be balanced off against those of the Palestinians.
Because of the complexity of these issues, those negotiating the
peace process may spend several years before major progress is
achieved on the refugee question.